


Seconds and Years

by cowboys_in_space



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Bullying, I swear the death isn't that bad, I'm Sorry, M/M, Time Paradoxes, all sorts of fun things, i love my children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-08
Updated: 2016-05-08
Packaged: 2018-06-07 04:55:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6786103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cowboys_in_space/pseuds/cowboys_in_space
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For as long as he could remember, Carlos had dreams of a certain voice. He never knew why he had the dreams, but he liked them. The voice was so deep, and rich, and soothing. But, most importantly, the voice was unexplainable, and if there was anything Carlos wanted to be, it was someone who could figure out anything, no matter how unexplainable it may be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seconds and Years

Carlos was used to his dreams being weird, like having all sorts of crazy animals raining down from the sky, and faceless old women, but the voice was new. Especially since it was actually nice, and not at all scary.

“I’ve been wanting to talk to for a long time, you know.” Not very scary, at least. 

Everything around Carlos was dark. Really dark. He couldn’t see anything. He could feel the floor beneath him, but that was all. That and the voice, booming from all around him in the blackness, so low and rich he could feel the deep thrum of it in his bones.

“You have?” Carlos asked in his not-nearly-as-impressive, high, six year old voice.

“Of course. But, things are very, very strange, so this was difficult to do,” the voice responded. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

“It’s okay.” Carlos didn’t know how to talk to a voice in his head who seemed to know exactly who he was. This lead to a long silence. Carlos began to wonder if the voice had left. That thought left him sad. Lonely.

“This is nice,” the voice said, making Carlos smile slightly, because it hadn’t left! “You’re so young and adorable. I don’t think I was quite ready for how precious you’d be!”

Carlos pouted. “I’m not adorable.”

The voice got serious, as it said, “Don’t let anyone tell you something like that. It’s a pack of lies. You are very, very adorable, Carlos.”

Carlos didn’t stop pouting.

 *** 

There didn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason for when the voice came; it was just there whenever it felt like it, and always while Carlos was asleep. Carlos asked it about that, once, when the voice hadn’t been  
there for almost a month. He asked, “Why do you come when you do? There doesn’t seem to be a pattern, and you haven’t been here for a while!” 

“A second, a day, a month, they’re all just so similar, you know?” the voice asked, booming from all around the darkness of Carlos’s sleeping mind. Was that supposed to be a response? “I hardly notice as time goes by, each second blending together into one, giant course of events, remembered in story form, that you can look back on and call your life. So really, the length between when we’ve last seen each other is only however you perceive it, you know?”

Carlos nodded sagely. “Ah, I see now.” He had no idea what any of that meant. He wished he could think up some of the things that the voice said himself; it sounded cool even if he didn’t get it.

“I’m glad to have cleared that up,” the voice fondly replied.

Carlos was very used to the voice, and eventually became used to the irregularity of it. As far as he cared, it just always was and always would be. And that’s the way it was supposed to be.

 *** 

Carlos was terrified of small spaces, and the large girl currently manhandling him knew it. The boy had not been expecting to be ambushed on such a lovely spring day. Everything was supposed to happen when it dark and menacing out, wasn’t it? Apparently not, as Carlos was not strong enough to escape the hands of his peer as she dumped him inside of the recycling bin out back of their middle school. He screamed as he fell in, cried as the lid was closed, and sobbed, banging on the walls as she sat on top, effectively preventing the weakling from just opening the bin and climbing out. Ten minutes in, Carlos stopped banging and just started hugging himself. Twenty minutes in, two other kids came and yelled at him through the blue plastic prison, telling him his hair was unruly and ugly, and that his teeth were weird, and that he was a freak who should never have dared to move into their town, and come into their school. Thirty minutes in, a teacher freed him and called his mother to come pick him up.

That was a long car ride, with his mother’s gentle, “Why didn’t you tell me?” and Carlos’s stubborn silence. Carlos hated that he couldn’t stop this from happening. He hated that he had made his mother worry. At this point, he hated himself.

Dinner that night was a quiet affair, with his mother and father shooting him significant glances, the way that worried parents do, and him pretending that he couldn’t see them, the way that upset children do. There seemed to be a quiet agreement between Carlos’s parents not to talk about what had happened while he was in the room. Carlos found this suitable.

After dinner, Carlos went straight to bed. He pretended not to hear his parents talking about him as he laid there, waiting for sleep to claim him. He really wished that they had never found out. Maybe he could handle it if they had never found out.

When sleep finally came, Carlos found himself back in the blue recycling bin, which was slowly getting smaller and smaller. He tried to move, but his limbs didn’t work. He tried to scream, but his lungs were useless, and the bin was getting so small, and it was about to touch him, and then…

And then nothing. Everything turned black, and Carlos could move again, and wasn’t that nice?

“Well, that was unpleasant.”

Carlos jumped slightly. He was used to the voice, but just a bit too jittery for this right then.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the voice spoke again. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. Quite the opposite, really.” Carlos took a few deep breaths, calming his nerves. He really hated nightmares.

“Really, though, what sort of monsters could have the nerve to pick on anyone so sweet?” the voice proceeded. “Oh, if I’d known about this… well, anyways, you seem rather frightened still. It’s strange to see you so frightened.”

There was a pause, as though the voice was waiting for Carlos to speak, but the boy honestly didn’t even know if he could speak right then, so the silence just dragged on for quite a bit longer than he would have liked.

“I understand if you don’t feel like talking right now,” the voice finally said. “You don’t have to! I can speak more than enough for two people, everyone says it. But just so you know, it’s okay to be frightened. You won’t be for too long.” A pause that Carlos knew was for dramatic effect. “You’re a lot stronger than you think you are.”

No one had told Carlos that before. How would you know, he thought, almost wanted to say, but kept it to himself. Who’s to say what sentient voices in his head could know? “How about I tell you a story?” the voice continued. “Someone who was once very close to me once told me a strange one, something about a sleeping curse and true love’s kiss? Well, obviously, that’s just preposterous, since the only things that can cast someone into eternal sleep is a Hooded Figure, and no amount of true love’s kiss is going to save you from that. So I’ve changed it to be just a bit more realistic…”

Carlos felt his worry slip away, like it had never been there in the first place. For the first time, he really thought about how he felt about the voice, rather than just thinking about what it was.

He decided that he liked it.

When he woke up and greeted his mother, he felt himself smile more genuinely than he had since they’d moved to their new town. 

 *** 

When Carlos was thirteen years old, he discovered science, and his life was changed forever. It was so beautiful; everything in it was dictated by logic, rather than by the pure emotions of his peers. Oh yes, Carlos was very into science. 

But a completely different reason for science being so appealing was The Voice. Trying to figure what exactly it was was thrilling. Carlos knew it couldn’t just be himself, because he didn’t think anything like The Voice seemed to, nor did he think he could just imagine a voice so powerful and deep. So the source had to have been somewhere else.

Carlos had realized by this point that he could probably just ask The Voice what it was, and it would tell him, but that would just take all of the fun away from it. Take away the scientific aspect. And Carlos wouldn’t do that. Afterall, he was very into science.

Unfortunately, The Voice seemed to have picked up on his new hobby, making the test subject less pure. That was disappointing. The Voice could have at least played along and pretended not to know! But no, it just said, “Oh, Carlos! I see you’ve gotten into science! That’s wonderful! I do hope that you’ve found something interesting to study; scientists are heroes, and heroes need a worthy cause.”

Oh yes, very subtle.

Carlos would just have to start figuring things out in the real world, he supposed. There were so many things to investigate; he could find science in everything, even trees! But still, he knew that nothing would be quite as interesting to study as The Voice. So fascinating.

 *** 

Carlos got accepted into his top choice college for science, the University of What It Is, two years early. So off to college he went, as the youngest science major in his school! It had some of the most amazing science programs Carlos had ever seen, including sending its faculty away on scientific expeditions. The Voice had been right; those scientists certainly were heroes. Carlos was planning to be one of them, someday. 

When Carlos got to his first ever class, Scientists Question Everything, they presented him with a lab coat. The second the crisp white fabric met his skin, he knew he was complete. It took two students to force it off of him at the end of the lesson. He decided to go shopping later that day to buy some of his own. He vowed never to be without one again.

When the year really picked up, it was all late-night studies, seconds and days and months all blending together in a cocktail of stress and worry that he knew would all be worth it in the end. The fact that time was blending was funny to him, for a reason that Carlos could no longer quite remember. 

Those years, Carlos didn’t hear The Voice even nearly as much as he had before. He simply wasn’t sleeping enough to. And even with all the science he was learning, he still couldn’t figure out how The Voice worked, or what it was. He wished he could go back to a time when he just accepted that it was there, and was going to stay. (He’d conveniently chosen to forget that he never just accepted The Voice, and had been questioning it from the very first dream.) Well, he was a scientist now, so he couldn’t afford to simply not question things anymore. As he had learned, scientists question everything. 

When Carlos did talk to The Voice during his years at the university, he noticed that it seemed less willing to let him go for the night, effectively forcing him to get a good night’s sleep for once. Well played Voice, well played. 

Carlos was pretty sure that he would have gone mad from sleep deprivation without it, so it’s not like he was in any position to complain.

After everything was said and done, Carlos went to the same school for his bachelor and master's degrees. He was hired to work there the second he had the right criteria for it; apparently after having taught him for so long, the faculty was unwilling to let him go quite that easily.

The Voice was less than surprised.

 *** 

After years of helping out in the university, Carlos was finally considered eligible for one of the exciting scientific expeditions that had made him so interested in the school in the first place. His destination: Night Vale, the most scientifically interesting town in the United States. He was so ecstatic, he could hardly sleep for a week before.

He did finally manage to get to sleep the night before the departure, and was greeted by his favorite blackness. “Hello,” Carlos said into the void, hardly able to contain his excitement over what he was going to do the next day, bursting with the need to tell the voice all about it. (If the voice didn’t already know. It was hard to know what something in his head could see of his life, and The Voice never really gave him any hints.)

“Hello,” the deep thrum responded from around him. “You seem excited.”

“I am so much more excited than I even know how to articulate. Do you remember how my university sends people on scientific missions to figure out the unexplained?”

"Of course I do, that was half the reason you chose your school.”

“Well, the big news is, I’m going on one!”

“That’s amazing!” The Voice said. “Oh, you’re going to do so many wonderful things there!”

“I know!” Carlos beamed at the blackness. 

“Tell me all about it.”

“Well, I’m going to a small desert town called Night Vale; no one has ever heard of it, which is weird, given all of the anomalies that seem to happen there. No one knows what I’ll find there, because the readings that we’ve been getting from the place are off the charts! There might not be another place like it in the whole world! And I’m going there tomorrow!”

The Voice chuckled slightly. “No, there really isn’t anywhere else like it, that I believe.” Its tone was a bit off; that was weird. “This place sounds dangerous; make sure that you’re going to be okay.”

“Don’t worry, a scientist is always okay.”

“I know. I should probably let you go, it seems like you’re going to be having amazing dreams tonight, and I’m only interrupting.”

“Are you sure? I mean, who knows when we’ll end up talking again.”

“If there is anything I can promise you, it is that we will talk again very, very soon. Sooner than you think. Be safe. Goodbye, Carlos, the beautiful scientist.”

“Wait!” but the blackness was already turning into a swirl of colors a bit too vibrant to be his reality. That goodbye had seemed a bit too… final. It had seemed a bit too final, and Carlos didn’t like that. He was scared.

 *** 

Night Vale was a lot smaller than Carlos had imagined it. It had all of the elements of any town, though. It had houses, and shops, and restaurants, and a city council chamber, and a radio station. 

But the way that the people of the town looked at him was just plain unnerving. They wouldn’t just look, they’d stare. But no one would say anything to him, even if he asked them something. They’d just whisper “interloper” and speed-walk away. No one interacted with him until a smartly dressed woman who was not tall, and whose hair was not long, finally approached him.

“You’re Carlos the Scientist, aren’t you?” she asked in a no-nonsense kind of tone.

“Yes, that’s me,” he replied, offering her his hand. 

She merely looked at it for a few seconds before turning away with a curt “follow me.” Carlos did as he was told. 

“Alright, your home will be near Big Rico's. No one does a slice like Big Rico. No one.”

Carlos waited for more information, or maybe a ‘Welcome, it’s nice to have you here!’ but no such luck. After a few beats of silence, he finally said,“Um… okay. Thank you very much for the information.”  
She just shot him an incredulous look. 

Carlos suddenly found himself inside of a large room with no real memory of going into any building, traveling through it, and eventually walking through the door and into this room, which was filled with people. “We’re at the town meeting you called,” she said. Carlos had not called a town meeting. Alright, time to improvise. Scientists were not made to be public speakers, but everyone was watching him now, wondering why he’d ‘called them in,’ so he might as well say something. This town was already living up to its reputation, this was the strangest thing that had happened to him while he was awake. He supposed he should have expected this from the briefing he’d gotten before coming.

Carlos walked up to the front of the room and awkwardly cleared his throat. “Hello, everyone. My name is Carlos, and I am a scientist. You all are, by far, the most scientifically interesting community in the US, and so I have come to study just what is going on around here.” Carlos smiled slightly, excitement building within him. This was the most scientifically interesting community in the US, and he was allowed to study there! Oh yes, he was excited. “I hope you all don’t mind my intrusion, and I cannot wait to start getting to know all of you.”

And with that the meeting was over, and he found himself eating corn muffins, which were lacking in salt, without remembering ever leaving the front of the room. That was going to take some getting used to. He hoped that it would stop happening once the town got used to him. He was just going to hold onto that hope.

Soon Carlos was free to go investigate his lab by Big Rico’s. It wasn’t too far from the place where he had the meeting, so he decided to just walk it to get a better look at the town. Luckily, there were no more teleportation incidents, but he did see a fire hydrant eat a desert shrub. That was something he’d never thought he’d see. He wished that he already had some of his equipment to check it out, but unfortunately, it was just him.

Far too soon, Carlos reached his lab. He closed his eyes and pushed open the door, relishing in the mechanical whirring of the machines the town had supplied and the smell of chemicals. When he opened his eyes, he saw the team of six scientists.

Night Vale had given him a whole team of scientists to work with. That was unexpected. Carlos had never been the leader of a team before, so this was another thing in this town that would be completely new.  
A lot of this town was new.

The team seemed to be making themselves busy with all the equipment around them, writing things on clipboards. One of them, a short woman with prominent bags under her eyes, had already gotten around to writing ‘science’ on a every white surface in the room. It was really starting to look like a real, cozy lab. They must have started experiment of some kind already, to have so much done before he even got there. 

Carlos decided that he liked them. He cleared his throat to get their attention. “Hello, I’m Carlos,” he said.

“Hello,” the others chorused. 

“So, I suppose we should figure out just what is going on with this town. How about we use these machines to do some tests?”

The other members of his team smiled at him, looking excited. Oh yes, he definitely liked them already.

 *** 

Night Vale got weirder and weirder the more Carlos and his scientists saw of it. There was one house in the new development of Desert Creek, out back of the old elementary school, that wasn’t actually real. It seemed like it’d exist! Like it was just right there, when he looked at it. And it was between two identical houses, but all the experiments showed that it was not, in fact, real. Carlos might have dared one of his team members to knock at the door. Just for science. They politely refused.

Another thing, it seemed like there were insane earthquakes happening all over Night Vale. They didn’t seem to ever stop, according to his readings. And yet, the ground was perfectly still. 

Ooh, and here’s the whomper, the sun didn’t even set at the right time! Carlos had even asked the others about it, and they all confirmed; the sun had not set at the right time that day. And he couldn’t figure out why; by all means, it was impossible! Or if it did happen, it’d be happening all over the world, but no. Just here. Carlos had checked the internet for word of other places reporting it and there had been absolutely nothing. Night Vale was just one mystery after another, he supposed.

At this point, Carlos was willing to investigate anything. And his whole team kept on saying that the radio station was a good place for him to go. He didn’t get why they wanted to push him to the station, but he was willing to comply, if it was in the name of science. So, he grabbed his geiger counter (the first science thing he found) and started for the station. He didn’t notice the sly little grins that his team shot each other. They, unlike him, had actually listened to the radio that day.

When Carlos entered the station, he looked around. It was small; just the room which he entered - a sort of break room, he guessed -, a room with all of the technical stuff that went into recording radio with a window into a different room, one with a microphone in it. This was a surprisingly normal setup. Carlos could handle that. 

When Carlos left the break room, filled with young people he assumed to be interns, he decided to check out the recording room. Carlos hated to admit it, be he didn’t really know anything about radio, so the room was simply fascinating to him. There was a man leaning against the door, speaking with a young girl at the controls. She was probably another intern. The man looked up at Carlos, and Carlos looked at the man, and watched as amazement spread across his face.

“Hello,” the man said, and Carlos’s world turned upside down.

The Voice. He would recognise it anywhere. He recognised it here. How is it that this man shared a voice with The Voice? That… this… what?

“I’m Cecil, Cecil Palmer,” his deep voice said, sounding more breathless and awed than Carlos had ever heard it in his dreams. “It’s a pleasure to talk to you, Carlos. I-I, um… Hey, could you, maybe, possibly, perhaps stay for an interview?”

That voice was too much. Carlos had to avoid it. He had to figure out what to think about this. “Um, no, no, sorry,” he spluttered out. He watched as the man’s face fell. The man was attractive, no doubt, but nothing about his appearance would even hint at the beautiful power his voice carried. He couldn’t see this man, Cecil, being The Voice. “It’s just that, I should really just do some experiments and then get out of here. Maybe a different time?”

And the smile that lit up Cecil’s face made Carlos take back every doubt he’d had. This was the fact of The Voice. Only someone as incredible as the voice could have a smile so powerful that it seemed to light up the whole, entire room. He could not recall any smile that had ever taken away his breath the way that one did.

“Of course!” Cecil said. “You can investigate wherever you need to! The station is completely and totally opened to you!”

Carlos nodded, and got to work with his geiger counter. It wasn’t too long before Cecil interrupted his work. “What are you looking for?”

Carlos knew he would never get used to hearing that voice while awake. “Oh, I’m just testing the place. For materials.”

“Oh, materials. Okay, I understand.”

“Alright.” Carlos smiled slightly at Cecil as he got back to work. He went into the recording room, ready to be done, when it started beeping. A lot.

The closer he got to the microphone, the more it beeped, until it sounded like a bunch of baby birds just before feeding time. Carlos’s eyes widened. He had to get out of there. Cecil had to get out of there. Everyone had to get out of there.

“You all need to evacuate the building,” Carlos said, looking around at Cecil and his intern, and there had been more people in the other room, too, and this was very bad. “You all have to get out right away.”

With that, Carlos hurried out.

That night, Carlos turned on the radio. Much to his chagrin, he heard Cecil’s velvet voice on, despite everything he’d told the man to do.

 

“... don’t know what materials he meant, but that box sure whistled and beeped a lot. When he put it close to the microphone it sounded like, well, like a bunch of baby birds had just woken up, really went crazy. Carlos looked nervous. I’ve never seen that kind of look on someone with that strong of a jaw. He left in a hurry. Told us to evacuate the building. But then, who would be hear to talk sweetly to all of you out there? Settling in to be another clear night and pretty evening here in Night Vale. I hope all of you out there have someone to sleep through it with, or, at least, good memories of when you did.  
Good night, listeners. Good night.”

 

While Carlos hated that the man had purposefully disobeyed him, putting that beautiful voice in jeopardy, he was glad to hear it while going to sleep. He was sure that he would berate Cecil in the morning. But for now, he could just dwell on the fact that Cecil had just called his jawline strong. He could worry about why that made him so happy at a different time.

Carlos drifted off to sleep, unable to stop thinking about Cecil and his breathtaking smile.

 *** 

Ever since Carlos got to Night Vale, The Voice had stopped coming to him. It took him awhile to notice, with Cecil on-air so often, but his dreams were now completely filled with color and images, and devoid of that rich, beautiful voice. 

But, this meant that whenever Carlos was upset, or distressed, Cecil was the best person to talk to. That voice of his had been soothing Carlos for years now, and since he couldn’t talk to it in his sleep now, Carlos knew the best option would be to actually talk to Cecil himself. But Carlos couldn’t. He just didn’t want to. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Cecil, because he did. Definitely. A lot. But, unfortunately, Carlos couldn’t talk to the same voice that had known him for so many years, knowing that no matter how much he wished for it to change, Carlos was a stranger to Cecil. So, Carlos listened to the radio. And the more he listened, the more certain Carlos was that Cecil was The Voice. They had the same strange sense of humor, the same way of looking at the world. The only difference was that Cecil didn’t know Carlos at all. That made it harder for Carlos to be with him. Carlos knew he was avoiding Cecil slightly (a lot). He knew it wasn’t fair of him, but he didn’t care. He didn’t like hearing the voice he knew so well talking to him like a stranger.

All of that changed when Carlos went into that village, underneath the bowling alley. Carlos had almost died, and all he could think about was how he wanted to see Cecil one last time. How he wanted Cecil to see him, and to know how he felt, and to understand. After that, Carlos stopped pulling away, and started to teach Cecil all of the things that The Voice had already known. 

That was something that Carlos never, ever regretted.

 *** 

Cecil didn’t age, and that was weird. And a little bit sad. Carlos still aged. Carlos didn’t want to leave Cecil all alone, but knew that he would someday have no choice.

*** 

Carlos lived a good life, in Night Vale, and died with the man he loved beside him. Cecil was not ready to let him go.

That didn’t seem to matter to the universe, however. Cecil could pray to any gods he wanted, even plead with the City Council, but his Carlos would never come back to him. Cecil would go on, with his radio show, as he had always done. But now his bed would feel just too empty. And he knew that his smiles looked just a little bit too hollow.

Cecil knew he could never bring Carlos back. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t find a way to talk with him.

It took Cecil a lot of research, but eventually, he found a new use for his bloodstone circles. If he said the right words, Cecil could talk with Carlos.

The only problem, it would only work up until the point when the person he was talking to actually met him. But Cecil didn’t care. He could see Carlos, and talk to him, even if it wouldn’t really be his Carlos. It was still enough.

The first time he tried it, Cecil saw a young Carlos, in Night Vale, as a child no less! It was adorable. Completely and unequivocally. He would watch Carlos going through Night Vale, seeing the things that Cecil knew like the back of his hand, and regarding them with such wonder and terror that it reminded Cecil of Carlos’s very first year in Night Vale. Only, more adorable and less handsome.

Then one day, Cecil thought of how much he wanted to talk to Carlos again. Even if the boy he saw wasn’t his Carlos yet, it was still Carlos.

It took him a while, but finally, he managed.

“I’ve been wanting to talk to for a long time, you know.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please don't lynch me for killing Carlos. I swear, I love him just as much as you do!  
> (P.S.  
> Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear what you all think of this little thing!)


End file.
